Smartest upgrade path from here?

Chiasek

Chiasek

Chiasek

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Joined
29 Mar 2015
Posts
29
I posted in mid 2011 about getting a gaming PC for around £500, bought the parts from here and built it myself. It remained my main PC for the next 2 years, then I got a macbook and I was only using my desktop for gaming. I've now barely turned it on in the past 6-8 months because I wasn't playing games as much and my macbook was better at pretty much everything else.

Well now I have some money to work with and want to get it going again. I've thought about getting an SSD and just doing a fresh install but I also kind of want to properly upgrade. I mainly play CS:GO, Fallout and Just Cause 2 but I'll probably want to play GTA5 if it does ever come out. I just don't want to be struggling to play stuff at 1080p.

My PC right now:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti Twin FrozR II 1024MB
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 (AM3) Motherboard
RAM: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
PSU: BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W
Case: Coolermaster 370

I also have an optical drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor and Windows so no worries there. I can obviously reuse any of the above, I was never quite sure of the case though, it always felt kind of flimsy. I definitely want 8GB of RAM if I am upgrading. Audio is a lot more important to me now than it was then so I'd want a motherboard with good onboard sound if not a sound card.

I'm just looking for what the smartest upgrade path would be. I'm fairly flexible on money but don't want to spend much more than like £300-400, certainly not £500 anyway. I don't have all that much knowledge of what's good at the moment, when I was getting the above spec, everyone here was getting Sandy Bridge or waiting for Bulldozer :D
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £269.98
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £72.98
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £49.99
Total : £402.55 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Thats one option open to you. the 250Gb SSD rather than a smaller 128GB SSD as GTAV on its own is 60GB.

Your GFX card is then the next thing thats holding you back.


-------------------------------------------


Or stick with AMD and get a CPU/board/RAM/GFX card and SSD,


YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI AMD Radeon R9 285 Gaming Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £139.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320E Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £109.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £72.98
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £52.99
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £46.99
Total : £432.55 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
Your PSU is a bit low powered to go for a AMD 290/290x, heres a suggestion
YOUR BASKET
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive** £269.99
Total : £269.99 (includes shipping : ).



Heres some memory and a SSD
YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £72.98
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit £59.99
Total : £142.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



And thats your budget gone.
 
Last edited:
Thanks, it seems to me like the smartest choice may be the route with the Intel CPU, otherwise I'm just buying another mediocre PC requiring a full upgrade in a couple of years. I also would like a new case, is there any suggestions for a good budget one that comes with a couple of fans and isn't too much bigger than the Coolermaster 430 I've got now? I'm thinking £40-50~.
 
Raijintek Agos is quite nice but large compared to your 430

NZXT Source 210, Antec GX300 and Corsair 200R are worth a look, though again most larger than your current one :(

The Spec 03 is quite small but I hate the cable management & only one fan included
 
Chiasek said:
Thanks, it seems to me like the smartest choice may be the route with the Intel CPU, otherwise I'm just buying another mediocre PC requiring a full upgrade in a couple of years. I also would like a new case, is there any suggestions for a good budget one that comes with a couple of fans and isn't too much bigger than the Coolermaster 430 I've got now? I'm thinking £40-50~.
Click to expand...

Yes there is - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-161-NX&groupid=2362&catid=35
 
stulid said:
Your GFX card is then the next thing thats holding you back.
Click to expand...

This kind of stuck with me, I don't see the point in doing an upgrade if I'm still not really going to be able to play GTA nicely, I want a PC that'll work well for a while and not constantly be thinking that I need to upgrade this other part of it.

Here's what I've come up with:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £277.98
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive** £269.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £49.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99
1 x CM Storm Speed RX Mousepad - Medium £9.95
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
Total : £739.87 (includes shipping : ).



I can reuse a HDD, optical drive, CPU cooler (Hyper 212) and the power supply. It seems that the power supply somewhat limits me to Nvidia but the 970 looks pretty good anyway. I need a new mousepad and of course will need more thermal compound as I'm reusing an old cooler. Also I watched some videos on this case and quite liked it.

Is this a good buy now or should I wait until after Computex? I've seen a lot of people talking about it but I'm not sure if I'd benefit from waiting at my budget? I still can't afford the top components anyway. Is Nvidia releasing anything around that time or is it just AMD?
 
That is a good buy.

At computex AMD should announce the 300 series with Nvidia supposedly releasing a GTX980ti to compete and Intel may release Broadwell CPUs.
 
stulid said:
That is a good buy.

At computex AMD should announce the 300 series with Nvidia supposedly releasing a GTX980ti to compete and Intel may release Broadwell CPUs.
Click to expand...

I'm not in too much of a rush to buy, is it worth waiting for Broadwell do you think? Is there any indication of how much better it may be and what price increase there may be?
 
Broadwell well I see rumours and they are releasing I think two desktop parts that work in Z97 boards. Doubt the speed difference is anything to cry about much like Sandybridge to Ivybridge or Haswell

After Broadwell comes Skylake with a new socket+chipset and that is in Q3/Q4.
 
Thanks for all your help Stulid although I've found someone that wants to buy my entire PC and I think I should take the offer rather than trying to individually sell 4 year old components. This means I need to change my requirements again as I need an entire system. I'm basically just hoping for a quick overlook of my basket, I've specced the 750w PSU because it's on offer and modular firstly but also so that SLI 970s are an option in the future. I also don't want to be in the same situation I am now where there are single cards that my power supply is unable to power.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £277.98
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive** £275.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 750W "80 Plus Gold" Semi-Modular Power Supply - Black £76.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £49.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Evo Professional CPU Cooler £27.95
1 x CM Storm Speed RX Mousepad - Medium £9.95
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
1 x Bitspower cable tie set 20 pieces 120mm UV Red £2.99
Total : £853.80 (includes shipping : ).



I am ordering today I promise, gotta make use of the deals :D
 
Thanks, these are the things I wouldn't notice.

Are you sure it comes with paste though? There isn't any in the description or the pictures and in the unboxing pictures here, I can't see any tubes of paste unless it's pre-applied?
 
Unfortunately I have already ordered and didn't look back here in time.

Thanks for all the help anyway, at least the one I ordered is pre-overclocked I guess.
 
Have you had a dispatched confirmation yet? I think you may have ordered too late to actually go out today, so a phone call, webnote or post in customer services could get them swapped out and you pay the difference.
 
I'd just had the order confirmed email so I made a post in the customer service forum. Hopefully it gets read and the changes made before they start to put my order together.

Thanks
 
Hi, just had the parts delivered and about to start the build. I've got what may be a stupid question though.

The PSU came with a european kettle lead, I have a UK one though. I can just use the UK kettle lead though right? I feel like it's obvious that you can but also if I'm wrong there is a chance of destroying components.
 
Yes use the UK one and all is fine.

One thing (and I havent seen a PSU with this feature for ages) in olden times some PSU had a 110/240v switch on the rear, make sure (if it has one) thats it on 240v before hand and never ever flip it over back to 110v.

Also OcUK should have added a UK kettle lead in with the PSU anyway? nothing in the boxes?

Anymore questions no matter how silly just ask and I will give you an answer:)
 
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